Re: [Marxism] Neither party has a solution to a Health care system in crisis [Querer es poder...]

["andypollack@xxxxxxxx" <andypollack@xxxxxxxx>]

Was Mike's original on the Marxism list? I think I missed it. In any case I 
couldn't agree more with what Andy (the other Andy :) said below about the 
impact on labor. The Labor Party's JustHealthCare campaign is moribund, but 
with healthcare being a central demand of the MWM, its centrality to EVERY 
contract negotiation going on now and to struggles against voiding of contracts 
by bankruptcy judges, the flu vaccine scandal, etc., etc. -- a campaign led by 
labor could be in the cards.

Naturally we could be much more certain of this if the Marxist left were more 
in touch with each other and coordinating such initiatives...

P.S. Was the Bartlett/Steele piece calling for single-payer (in Time and the 
Times and in their new book) every posted to this list?

-- Andy <esquincle@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks for posting this, Mike!

On Oct 24, 2004, at 10:03 AM, Mike Friedman wrote:

(the conclusion of the interview) -- David Himmelstein:

> WE NEED a real uprising of the American people. Going up against a
> $300 billion-a-year industry is no easy matter.

[clip]

> But as Henry Sigerist, known as America's greatest medical historian,
> put it when he appeared on the cover of Time magazine back in the
> 1940s, only when the U.S. has a party of labor will we have a
> national health program. A party representing the interests of the
> working class was the precondition for universal health care in
> Germany, in Britain, in Canada.
>
> Maybe we can win national health insurance even before we get such a
> third party, but it's going to take a broad strengthening of the left.

I've been working actively for single-payer national health insurance,
as a member of Himmelstein's group (www.pnhp.org).  (There is a
groundswell now.)

While a "a party representing the interests of the working class" may
be the precondition for universal health care -- the struggle for that
party also requires demands like this one.  The demand for universal
health care in America now emerges as a demand of revolutionary
proportions.  It is not only an assault upon the sanctity of corporate
profit (and state-sponsored corporate profiteering).  The American
health insurance system is employer-based.  Demanding the end of
dependence upon our employers for medical care also invokes class
independence.  How many working people in America would consider
changing jobs if they did not have to worry about health benefits?
(Answer:  almost everyone who has them.)  Imagine what union demands at
local bargaining might be if health benefits were off the table.
Imagine the potential creativity, through class power, unleashed by
this reform.

andy


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